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Tookie Williams’ work

At a conservative estimate, (Tookie Williams) has saved hundreds of lives over the past few years. Because of his extraordinary work, Stan was nominated for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize by a group of Swiss parliamentarians, after his anti-gang message helped to defuse a violent gang conflict in that country.

I was beginning to understand that my experiences with the dysfunctional status quo of the prison culture – as well as drug addiction, poverty, gangsterism, racism, and other roadblocks – had become the excuses that defined my life. But no longer would my life, my being, be dictated by blind ignorance. Nor would I ever again allow the excuse of circumstance to dictate who I should be. It was daily studying and questioning that prompted my soul searching. I began to develop a sense of critical reasoning from which sprang the first stirrings of conscience. This was the moment when redemption infused itself into my life.

Attorneys for Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang, implored the California Supreme Court on Wednesday to grant them access to a broad array of trial evidence as part of an effort to show that his 1979 conviction for four Southern California murders was unconstitutional.